Goldmark, Peter Carl

Enter your search terms:

Goldmark, Peter Carl, 1906–77, Hungarian-American engineer, b. Budapest. He studied at the Univ. of Vienna (B.S., 1929, Ph.D., 1931); worked for a radio company in England (1931–33). After emigrating to the United States (1933), he worked as a construction engineer until joining the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1936. There he developed the first commercial color television system, which used a rotating three-color disk. Although initially approved by the Federal Communications Commission, it was later superseded by an all-electronic color system that was compatible with black-and-white sets. Goldmark developed the 33 1⁄3 LP phonograph that greatly increased the playing time of records. He also developed a scanning system used by the Lunar Orbiter spacecraft in 1966 to transmit photographs to the earth from the moon.